Minnar – “I wish I could stop time”

People don’t really mean ‘I wish I could stop time’ in a literal sense; what they actually mean is ‘I wish this moment could last forever’ or ‘I want to be able to do this or that.’ I’m interested in exploring what it means when we can literally stop a clock from moving forward. The act of actually stopping time forces us to understand how futile and pointless it is for us to want to stop time when time is just a measure we believe dictates how our lives move. In reality, our perception of time slows or speeds depending on how we choose to make use of our time.

Using a relay, the red clock stops time whenever someone in the world tweets something containing the phrase “stop time.” The stop lasts a quarter of a second per character of the tweet (the stops range from 10 seconds to a couple minutes). Displayed next to the black clock at the accurate time, throughout the day the red clock slows to reveal the time we actually lose through wishing time would stop.